Details

CPU Clock Rate

4.6GHz

CPU Temperature While Idle

32.0° C

CPU Temperature Under Load

60.0° C

GPU Core Clock Rate

1.15Ghz

GPU Effective Memory Clock Rate

7.01Ghz

Description

My Story - you've probably heard this before. Love my iPhone, love my iPad, needing a new PC- of course, the sexy iMac = started to research, iMac is way expensive. What, there are people who actually build their own PC's? Began to research = Found PCPartPicker, Found Linus, Found AJ, Found Paul @ Newegg. Made decision, convinced wife- and here it is:

Requirements: New dad here, starting to get fairly serious with my video and photo editing. 2 yr old Toshiba Satellite laptop just wasn't cutting it anymore with Adobe. I needed a powerful mid-range gaming/low-end workstation type build. I have only gamed on consoles in the past, thought I would give the PC a try. Budget of around $2,500.

Requirements from wife: "The only place we have to put this thing is in the Children's Loft area, I don't want to see wires everywhere!"-- "oh and you have to name it after our daughter!" (Bells is our daughter's nickname, short for Bella)

Process: Started in early August. I promised myself I would be the responsible adult/parent and purchase the components throughout the course of a few months--hopefully banking on catching a few good sales. And that I did. Purchased the final part (GPU) on Halloween. I took Friday, November 8th off work to build. Luckily, I didn't have any major problems and I am sooo extremely happy.

Case: Simple. Not a new model but has had consistent raving reviews. I hada hard time deciding between the gray or white so I let my wife decide. She made a good choice with the white.

CPU: Since I was going to be editing, I went with the 4770k to try my hand at overclocking. I was intimidated a first but ASUS' UEFI makes it pretty easy. Thanks to AJ and his youtube videos.

CPU Cooler: I got the H100i because it was on sale for $90 bucks, had pretty good reviews and I thought it just looked awesome.

Motherboard: Went back and forth on this one. Started with ASUS after reading reviews and watching AJ on YouTube then wanted to go the MSI Power route because of the color scheme. Ultimately landed back with ASUS because it makes more sense to go with your instinct and not color schemes. Landed with the HERO- wanted to go with the FORMULA, but could not justify the price difference.

PSU: Went with the Corsair 860i for expandability, and again, I caught a decent sale. Also, the compatible white sleeved cable set was a huge plus.

Memory: Probably the biggest struggle I had was deciding 16 or 32. Let's face it- these things aren't cheap. At the end of the day, I kept going back to my video editing needs-- knowing that 16gb would be more than enough for just gaming, but for video editing, I may find an advantage with the 32.

Storage: Easiest decision- wanted the SSD for programs and boot drive-- and the 2 mechanical drives for scratch disk/media separation. I may setup a RAID 0 or 1 in a month or two.

GPU: Struggled with this decision too. I was originally going with the NVIDIA GTX 760, but since this was my last purchase-I was lucky enough to wait until NVIDIA slashed their prices a couple weeks ago- so I moved up to the 770 from MSI (Lightening). The yellow doesn't match my color scheme but you really don't even see it. I love the black re-enforced metal on the top of the card. It looks solid and BAD A$$

Fans: Nice Xigmatek white LEDs-- replaced the stock fans on the case and CPU cooler. Very quiet and look good.

Monitor: Went with two 24" IPS monitors from ASUS- Again, got a good deal on Newegg with these. I use dual monitors at work and we all know, "once you go multiple monitors, you don't go back"= I would have gotten a 3rd one but I don't have enough space on my desk--- maybe in time.

Splurges: NZXT HUE and APERATURE. Love the LED effects-- so does my 1 yr old! Cheap at 30 bucks. Needed the APERATURE for the USB 3.0 and digi-card reader. Also-- got the ASUS Blu-ray just because I'm one of those guys who keeps a bluray of photos in my safety deposit box. And finally-- the WHITE Corsair sleeved cables. 100 bucks, TOTALLY UN NEEDED but LOVE em!

Hope you guys enjoy my build-- be gentle, this is my first go around. While I absolutely love this computer, I do feel a bit 'empty' now that the process is over. I'm trying to get some of my friends to let me spend their money and build them one, just so I can go thru the process again-- is this normal?

This is a very well thought out build. I can understand the RAM to a certain point... 32GB of RAM for photo-editing... If you're anything like my sister and her family then you'll use every bit LOL
Bells is a nice name for the build and I'm diggin the IKEA furniture LOL i digress...
As for the 'splurges', those cables are very nice. I went with cables from ModDIY.com and those cost a pretty penny LOL.
I'm no expert so I'll leave the technicals for everyone else who sees this. Goodjob

EDIT: It's totally normal to want to keep building. I compare building PC's to getting a tattoo. The first one always grabs ya LOL

Oh believe me, that "now what?" feeling shortly after finishing and testing a build is totally normal! When I built a second system for my brother, it felt like fulfilling a personal need. PC building is a drug...

Anyways, if you plan on RAID1 or RAID0 with any of your drives, make sure to pick up a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) as RAID volumes drop out if your computer doesn't shut down normally (ie, power outage or crashing from an unstable overclock). Cyberpower makes great units. Be sure to pick up a sine wave model though, as the AX860 is an active PFC power supply.

I love your setup, it's my favorite part of every build is to see how they setup monitors where they put the tower, run cables, and how to keyboard and mouse along with audio sits and yours is probably one of my favorites for sure!

Very nice first build dude, just finished build my nephew new rig and now I want to build one of my own. My part list is almost identical as yours. Great that the wife is happy with it too, it isn't easy for the ladies to understand our needs. I guess you're lucky. Great job.

If you're going to go with RAID, make sure that the hard drives have the same storage size (2 of the same HDD variant is best) otherwise things might go haywire. Excellent build. Well done. I wish I had the kind of dough to upgrade my PoS but oh well, that time will come :)

Absolutely perfect! For your first build, this is awesome. Kind of jealous I didn't have $2,700 to drop into my first build. I must compliment you on such a well though out part choice. I wish my first build went this smoothly. Well done!

Prime95 is by far one of the most popular stress-testing utilities out there. just set it to the "blend" option and let it run for 15-30 minutes minimum, preferably longer. if you get errors while running the test, it means your overclock is unstable and you might have to adjust your voltage and/or frequency settings.

you can safely run an Intel processor up to around 80C on an overclock, assuming no 24-7 operation, but its absolute thermal limit is around 100C. at around the 90-100C range you could see throttling or a complete system shutdown, neither of which are desirable and you might need to take the voltages or frequencies down a notch.

Please tell me that you have an insurance on that?
If it would fall or the baby would do something with it?
Otherwise perfect build great research and last could you post some pics of the cable management on the backside, looks good for the front, just personally wondering? :D

I will try to get a pic of the backside but I will admit, I spent little to know time with the cable management back there. I just made sure no cables were pulled too tightly- the Corsair case has plenty of room to hide cables on that side. Thanks!

installation was easy... however I did not hook up via usb/corsair link because I wanted to control via the Asus AI software. I hooked the fans on top of my rad to CPU and CPU-OPT on the motherboard-- and everything works fine.

I put my applications and operating system on my ssd.
All of my raw media I put on a 2 tb 7200 hd (music, video, photos)
And then I have another 1 tb 7200 hd that I keep my docs--- but truth be told, I am utilizing Sky Drive for most of my documents.

Make sure you have backup for your media and important files. You can get a NAS or just an external hard drive

no problems-- I was aware of the risk but after researching extensively, i concluded that if you order the same model of ram with the same speeds, etc-- there is very little risk. Ive had no problems. Just run the memtest, etc.

I got inspired from you & build the exact PC with almost same components but facing problem with Corsair H100i Corsair Link Detection , in Corsair Link the H100i is not being detected, did you faced the same problem?

Thanks for the note-- I did have that issue at first but was able to fix it. I've forgotten what I did. Were you able to remedy it? If not, I can try to figure out what I did. Sorry for the late reply.